Catherine Deveny writes ironically that her recent column on why do women still change their names upon marriage seems to have realised her “aim of whittling my readership down to three”.
It was a case of Team Deveny versus Team How Dare You. Game on! Poke that animal in the cage!
Now, some of the critics of Deveny’s original column had a point about it being judgmental, even though I’m a fan of women who keep their own names. Riffing off her discovery that Olympic medallist hurdler Jana Pittman is using her husband’s surname Rawlinson on the track now, Deveny did use some pretty pointed rhetoric.
Insecure or conservative or stupid women are bowing to the wishes of their husbands.
and
Why would you do something so drastic simply because you decided to delude yourself it was easier? Because you are deeply insecure, deeply conservative or deeply stupid. And in deep denial.
She was obviously looking for a reaction on that, and she would have expected some blowback. What surprised Deveny was the breadth and depth of the angry response to her column:
I’ve poked the cage of private schools, clipboard-carrying parents, unnecessary caesareans, 4WD owners, even God, and I have never been so overwhelmed by a response (equally positive and negative). Team How Dare You were extremely defensive and highly emotional. There was a stunning lack of clear rational thinking in every response. It was glaringly obvious that many women who have changed their names have a deep conflict about the true motivation behind their decision and the convenient excuse they present to the world. The blokes were just as illogical. And angry.
This week she argues that for all the hostility, nobody came up with a valid response to her original questions. From the first column:
I ask women why they change their last name. They tell me “it’s just easier”. It’s not. How easy is it changing the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card? It’s not.
I’ve never had a reasonable answer to that question when I ask it, either.
In the end, this paragraph in her original column, getting back to the issue of Jana Rowlinson, is probably what brought out the deeper underlying hostility about her questioning current marital arrangements:
Whenever two parents are working and the child is propped up on the sideline waiting for its turn, why is it only the woman who gets bagged, as if the father has no responsibility for the care of his own child? Why, when a woman is working, does she always get asked, “Who’s looking after your children?”, but the father never does? We need to take the focus off the role of mother and put it on to parents as a team.
Everybody wanted to ignore that part of her column so hard that they dialled up the volume to “vitriolic” on the more simplistic surname issue. 
Even the sainted Kerri-Anne Kennerley, apparently, was so offended that she resorted to broad-brush stereotyping of Deveny as someone who “probably couldn’t get a man”.
Deveny seems more bemused and amused than alarmed by the baying of the How Dare You brigade. Just as well, they’re probably going to be hanging on her every byline, looking for something else to be offended by, for weeks yet.
Similar Posts:
- Women’s work and hottie theory by Lauredhel
- Work/Life/Family Balance in NSW by tigtog
- Smug married guy, you don’t know anything about single mothers by Guest Hoyden
- We’re just advertising clothes, honest! by tigtog
- “I will…NOT” by tigtog
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 53 comments }
← Previous Comments
It’s worth noting that the practice of passing a ‘family’ name to offspring is not universal. Some cultures endow their offspring with only given names. If you think it’s hard work getting a driving licence or bank account with your husband’s surname (and it is) then pity the plight of an Indonesian acquaintance of mine who only had one name. He had to invent a second name for himself so that he could officially exist in a culture that assumes everyone has at least two names. He now calls himself Jon [Hisbirthname].
I’m always a little surprised when I hear that one of the biggest problems women face when keeping their own names is their husbands – I actually kept mine because that’s what mine wanted. I wanted us to have the same name, and was really pushing for hyphenating, but he didn’t care. I talked up how easier it would be to have the same name, and he just didn’t care at all. Finally, the wedding came and went, and we just didn’t do anything with out last names. I’m glad now. My name is short, easy to pronounce, and, well, mine. No one can pronounce his name, so now when I get calls for “Mrs. *completely butchered attempt at his last name*” I just hang up, because everyone I want to talk to knows who I am. I haven’t had any problems with keeping my last name, my family just assumed I would and haven’t said anything, and as I understand the only people in his family who have said anything bad about it are saying it in Spanish and in a country that I am not in, so they are easy to ignore.
The only problem is that now that we’re talking about children he’s realized that he would like all of us to have the same last name for the kids, so we’re going to have a big debate up ahead. I’m trying to convince him to have use keep our names and go with the Spanish way of naming for the kids, but his immediate family dropped that custom when they came to America, so he doesn’t feel a lot of connection to it. So who knows what we’ll do?
I don’t think women who change their last names or name their kids after the father are “traitors to feminism” or whatever, but I would like to see more men changing their names or be totally comfortable with their children having the mother’s name instead of viewing it as a way for her to separate them. It seems like men who have names they don’t like or are awkward just change them to something they like when they hit 18 or whenever, while women just wait until they get married to change it to something they don’t like a whole lot better. That’s really not fair, or logical.
ohmykoze, the point is, my father got his name from his father, but everyone considers that name my father’s, not his father’s. I got my name from my father also, but instead of considering it mine, people say it’s…my father’s. WTF? Why does a name passed down from a father “belong” to a man but not to me? Amanda is right, by that logic the name Marcotte only belongs to the originator of the Marcotte line. Regardless of where it came from, my name belongs to me now as much as my father’s name belongs to him. The logic that I have a man’s name anyway so i should just change it to another’s and not see it as any different doesn’t hold.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed. If you wish to re-open this discussion, please leave a comment on the latest Open Thread.